Analyst firms are full of shit
If you’re running an enterprise software company, you can’t say it publicly for (at least perceived) risk of retaliation. If you’re working for a large enterprise, you can’t say it publicly since you’re using them to justify your software purchasing decision.
But in my private conversations with both software vendors and buyers, everyone more or less says the same thing: analyst firms are full of shit.
The supposed value prop for vendors to pay firms like Gartner and Forrester is market / competitive intel. The reality, however, is that very few of the vendors I speak with gain any real value from the intel provided by these analyst firms. Rather they view paying as a bounty to speak with the analyst, in the hopes that they’ll find themselves favorably included in Magic Quadrant or Wave reports.
I’ll stop here for a moment. I have no hard evidence that Gartner and Forrester are pay-to-play. But in my private conversations, that’s certainly how vendors feel. And it’s clear that if the prominence of these analyst-led opinion pieces were to fall from grace, so would vendor interest in paying the so-called “bounty” (their words, not mine).
This pay-to-play perception is also held by software purchasers in the enterprise.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from a Fortune 500 CIO I recently spoke with:
“Gartner has pivoted the business model to be so aligned with taking money from the companies they’re trying to assess that it’s no longer credible.”
This point of view isn’t unique. I’ve spoken to 37 CIOs (21 from the Fortune 500) over the past year, and the overwhelming majority agree. While Gartner and Forrester tout analyst-driven advice that educates enterprise software purchasing decisions, the truth is that these reports are most often used to justify decisions that have already been made.
The ol’ adage “nobody gets fired for buying IBM” can be extended to “nobody gets fired for buying whatever is in the upper right hand quadrant”.
For those in the know, nothing I write here is news. So say it with me (but not too loud or they’ll hear you!).
Analyst 👏 Firms 👏 Are 👏 Full 👏 Of 👏 Shit
